Against Psychotherapy and Biological Psychiatry

Seth Farber

It is well known that in the last decade the traditional models of talk therapy have
been replaced by Biological Psychiatry which minimizes the significance of any kind of
interactive process between professional and client. The fortune of the biopsych industry
has been augmented by the emergence in the last decade of a number of influential
critiques of both Freud as a person and psychoanalytic theory and practice.

Probably the first loud volley of the attack on psychoanalysis was fired by Jeffrey
Masson, a disillusioned Freudian scholar. It dented the neo-Freudians slightly but it was
easy for them-- because of some of Masson's own statements--to discredit Masson as a man
with questionable motives. But by the time the dust had settled from the widespread 1980s
phenomenon of therapists' involvement in the unwittingly induction of false memories in
children and adults of experiencing sexual abuse (as children), the sober-minded but
excoriating reassessment of psychoanalysis by the former Freudian, eminent literary
critic and Berkeley professor emeritus Frederick Crews managed to seriously undermine the
intellectual credibility of psychoanalysis.

Crew's evaluation was probably the first intellectual attack on Freud to be published
in New York Review of Books where over the years Freud had been treated with nothing less
than unqualified reverence--as one would expect from high-brow East Coast, often Jewish,
intellectuals.

The new breed of Freudian debunkers did not attempt to deconstruct Freudian
metaphysics, as I have done in my books and essays. Rather they effectively demonstrated
that Freud's interpretations of his patients--his case studies--were fanciful and
influenced by opportunistic motives (see Watters and Ofshe, 1999 for an account; also
Swales, 1977; Porter, 1987). Thus neither Freud's case studies nor his broader
theoretical generalizations were warranted by the empirical data he presented.

Furthermore, hundreds of studies in the last two decades have led ineluctably to the
conclusion that although conversing about one's problems is often therapeutic, the
trained therapist is no more helpful to the troubled experimental subject--usually a
college student--than a person with comparable social status but no education, training
or experience as a therapist at all (Dawes, 1994). In one experiment psychoanalysts did
no better than non-Freudian therapists or than English professors! with no experience as
therapists. As Watters and Ofshe point out (1999, p.131), if one were comparing trained
and untrained surgeons one would end up with dead patients.

The mystique of the Freudian initiate, the psychoanalytic priest uniquely qualified to
administer the psychoanalytic sacraments, was exposed as merely a scientistic
superstition. Even the more modest claim that the therapist in general by virtue of her
graduate studies and her specialized training has acquired skills that endowed her with
superior ability to help troubled persons did not withstand examination.

What justifies then all those years and money devoted to professional education and
training for "mental health professionals"? This was a question that very few
psychotherapists--including critics of modern psychiatry--or journalists were prepared to
ask; thus despite all the evidence indicating that therapy is in large part a con job,
the public remains convinced that the psychotherapist is an indispensable expert in how
to cope with life, whose specialized skills are analogous to that of a heart surgeon.

During this same period--the 1980s and 1990s-- the status of Biological Psychiatry
began to rise meteorically. Unfortunately many of the critics of Freudianism, such as
Crews, have accepted credulously the propaganda of biological psychiatry--particularly
its fraudulent claim that it has been "scientifically" demonstrated that most
of the problems in living experienced by individuals, particularly those with
"serious mental illnesses", are caused by "brain
disorders."

Yet as Valenstein (1998) has demonstrated there is no evidence to support the claim
that most unhappiness or strange behavior (e.g. "schizophrenia") is caused by
brain disorders. The brain disease or chemical imbalance theory may sound more scientific
than the idea of "mental illness" but it is based ultimately on the same false
premise: that something is wrong with a person who is unhappy, that something must be
wrong, that happiness is more "natural" than unhappiness, that the aspiring
individual who is having problems and confronting obstacles in life must be damaged in
some way. Once this premise is accepted it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, i.e., it
generates "facts" that seem to support it but on closer examination lend
themselves to a better explanation.

Furthermore, the pharmaceutical companies are able to devote billions of dollars to
marketing, which includes buying--in effect-- psychiatrists who deliberately manipulate
the research data to come up with conclusions that enable the drug companies to convince
the FDA that their products are safe and effective--and thus to grant FDA authorization
for their products (Kirkpatrick, 2000).

Although the propaganda of the "psycho-pharmaceutical complex" (Breggin) has been debunked by Valenstein (1998) and Breggin (1991,1997), and a few others (including journalists), their criticisms seem to have little impact on the mental health professions. Breggin has written close to a a dozen books demonstrating the brain-damaging and brain- disabling effects of "anti-psychotic medication," and the generally iatrogenic effects of subjecting children and adolescents (who do not manifest sufficient docility) to psychiatric drugs.

But the American Psychiatric Association does not welcome debate on this topic and
does everything to minimize Breggin's influence, while the mainstream press rarely even
reviews his books--thus he has been effectively marginalized. Although Valenstein's
credentials are more conventional than Breggin's and thus he appears more
"respectable," his deconstruction of the biopsychiatric model (1998) has
received little attention and has had virtually no impact on the mental health
professions. The public remains convinced that millions of people suffer from biochemical
imbalances.

At this point many of the opponents of biological psychiatry -- led by Breggin -- are
fighting a rearguard action to save old fashioned psychotherapy (and in many cases their
careers) and to restrict the influence of biological psychiatry. What is overlooked by
both sides is how neo-Freudianism throughout the course of the 20th century created the
foundation for biological psychiatry, as I have attempted to demonstrate (see Farber,
2001), by establishing in the public mind the belief that virtually all problems
adjusting to life are due to "mental disorders." The current witch-hunt in the
schools for children with "attention deficit disorders" (who now number several
million) is a product of that very same secular Augustinianism that was based at its
inception on the premise that the majority of human beings are existentially
deficient.

Is there any reason to believe that had the circumstances been propitious (e.g. ample
financial resources) that the neo-Freudians would not have carried out the same
witch-hunt -- in the interest of children, of course-- that bio-psychiatrists are
currently responsible for?

Obviously there are radical ontological differences between neo-Freudianism and
biological psychiatry, but the exploration of this topic would take us far beyond the
scope of these comments. In closing I will point out two similarities:

Whether the patient is defined as a dysfunctional biochemical machine or a mentally
diseased person, in either case his or her full ontological worth is not recognized. In
some ways bio-psychiatry is less pernicious than neo- Freudianism. It is more democratic:
Almost everyone suffers today from a biochemical imbalance--perhaps even the
psychiatrist. In the neo-Freudian view the therapists are depicted as so far superior to
ordinary (unanalyzed) persons that they resemble Plato's philosopher-kings. Even highly
accomplished persons -- here in New York City where therapy is the dominant religion
among professionals -- seem to believe their therapists are supernatural beings. This
attitude is reminiscent of pre-democratic societies, where th! e commoner groveled before
his aristocratic masters. If the neo-Freudian view is correct why have a democracy at
all? From this perspective it seems more consistent to vest all power in the hands of the
psychotherapist-kings.

Second, this brings us to consideration of the political function of both ideologies, Therapy and Biological Psychiatry: Both obscure the political and social roots of individuals' problems and offer their products--therapy or drugs-- as solutions to the human dilemma. Therapy and Prozac-these are both the "the opium of the people," both are species of "psychologism" as Ken Barney has termed it: "The Western world is steadily deteriorating, producing even more conflict, violence, alienation, despair and psychopathology.' Yet with the help of the cultural industries and psychology, all of this is mystified." Barney believes that the more humanistic therapeutic approach is not a genuine alternative: "It transcends the crude reductionism of the medical model but it is still part of the bigger problem of psychology, which both mystifies the wider reality and also plays a central role in legitimizing and sustaining the mental health system, including its overtly oppressive practices" (Barney, 1994, p.29).

Mental health professionals view the human being essentially as a deficient entity in
need of fixing by experts. Both schools overlook the potentialities and unutilized
capacities and talents of each individual--yet it is these qualities that are the basis
of a truly democratic community. This point has been made by both James Hillman (1991)
and John McKnight (1995) among others. Hillman has critiqued the therapeutic
(neo-Freudian, in my terms) vision of human beings at the basis of the "recovery
movement." People come together not on the basis of common interests or goals but
only in terms of their problems, their deficiencies: "For everyone to sit around a
room because they're fat--I don't know if that's a way a civilization can
continue...Suppose we begin seeing ourselves not as patients but as citizens....Suppose
the man or woman coming to you as the therapist is above all else a citizen? Then you are
going to have to think about these people a little differently; they're no longer just
cases" (p.64).

McKnight notes that the therapeutic vision has replaced the democratic vision.
"The power to label people deficient and declare them in need is the basic tool of
control and oppression in modern industrialized societies..."(p.16). This power is
given to therapists and others in the "helping professions." He continues,
"Politics is the act of citizens pooling their intelligence to achieve the maximum
human good. Medicalized politics is the disavowal of that common intelligence, for it
individualizes--by bestowing clienthood and replacing policy with the placebos of
technique and technology...The chief requirement is to restore politics, for we can find
no cure in any medical function that is... [anything] more than a subs itute for
politics. The central reform is the conversion of clients to citizens" (pp.
61-2).

Thus utopian as it may be, I propose as the alternative both to psychotherapy (which
has now been exposed as a sham, insofar as training does not contribute to efficacy) and
to bio-psychiatry, a renewed effort to re-think and to actualize the ideal of
"participatory democracy," as it was conceptualized by Jefferson, implemented
during the early days of the republic (with the obvious limitations) as described by De
Touqueville, and as it was reaffirmed this century by the student radicals in the
mid-1960s (when the term was coined by Tom Hayden) before they capitulated to the lure of
the totalitarian ideology of Leninism. The ontological equality and worth of each person
posited by original Christianity (and by other religions) and by the founders of our
country calls for this kind of political transformation. And conversely the quest for
democracy is doomed as long as it does not rest on an ontological foundation that
recognizes the full worth of each individual, each citizen.

Farber earned his Ph.D. in psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in 1984 and established the Network Against Coercive Psychiatry in 1988. He was for sixteen years a practicing psychotherapist. He is also a public speaker who has appeared on William F. Buckley's Firing Line and other television programs. His other books include Madness, Heresy and the Rumor of Angels. Visit the Seth Farber website.